how do I hate C. S. Lewis: let me count the ways...

[edenfalling]

I have decided that the standard map of the Eastern Ocean (and the Bight of Calormen, which, when is that ever mentioned in canon? why is it named for Calormen when most of its coastline is Archenland, Narnia, and the disorganized lands north of Narnia? I am so confused) is for shit. It does not make sense when put together with Drinian's account of the Dawn Treader's voyage given in ch. 2 of VDT. Note that he says they have sailed more than 400 leagues, which, if we go with the standard definition of a league being 3 nautical miles, would mean they've sailed about 1,400 standard miles -- which is roughly the distance from New York to Havana. Narnia is just not as big a country as it would need to be to create that kind of distance based on the implied map scale.

Also, the name "Lone Islands" tends to imply a group of islands that are ALONE. As in, way the hell out in the middle of the ocean, not bang up against the northern coast of Calormen. So I reject the map on linguistic grounds as well.

(This brought to you by my general frustration at C. S. Lewis and his world-building failures. And also by my nagging desire to write a story in which Narnia is NOT half so well pacified and integrated as Caspian would like to think, and Prunaprismia takes advantage of his year-plus absence to damn near usurp the throne in the name of her son, which Caspian et al discover when they return to the Lone Isles (and also discover that closing down the slave trade has increased the unrest and given Prunaprismia additional support) and then there are a few years of ugly civil war in which the Star's daughter gets to be awesome, and which might help explain why Caspian seems to be eighty-plus in SC while Rilian was apparently only a "very young knight" ten years before, though really that never has and never will make much sense, because Lewis could not be consistent and logical if his life depended on it, argh!!!)

Comments

[joisbishmyoga.livejournal.com]

I suppose I would take the map as not-to-scale, cutting out a lot of leagues of empty water for the sake of saving whatever the map was drawn on, paper or parchment or whatever. Something that is most likely expensive and would make the map bulky and unwieldy on a sea voyage.

Also, didn't Prunaprismia leave Narnia via deus ex Aslan at the end of Prince Caspian?

As for TSC, what if Caspian and the Star's Daughter had fertility issues, so that Rilian wasn't actually born until late in Caspian's life, 50s-60s? The Star's Daughter isn't human or even terrestrial (narnestrial?), so it would make sense that they'd have trouble concieving. Which leaves some twenty or thirty years of heirless royalty for the political factions to intrigue around, and a very nervous (and nowhere near integrated or pacified) public who remember what it was like before Caspian. (There have got to be a lot of human conservatives who much preferred it before Caspian X, when everybody was properly white cishet Christian human and there was none of this so-called equality being used to procure special rights for everyone else as if they were really people.)

[edenfalling]

It's also not-to-scale in the relative sizes of the islands versus the mainland countries, I think, but that is a different issue. And given that Lewis blithely speaks of Caspian sailing from Terebinthia to the Seven Isles to the Lone Islands as going "on east" in SC, I am inclined to think that the positions of the islands are also inaccurate, since based on the map I would describe sailing from Terebinthia to Seven Isles as sailing north, and from Seven Isles to the Lone Islands as sailing south -- not east in either case!

In summary, Lewis is not a cartographer.

Also, didn't Prunaprismia leave Narnia via deus ex Aslan at the end of Prince Caspian?

Only in the Disney film, where she got together with Glozelle (who was both Spared by the Adaptation and turned into a commoner general rather than a greedy nobleman). In book canon, she disappears utterly from the story once Caspian flees to the forest. It is therefore perfectly logical to suppose that she and her unnamed son became a focus for any Telmarines who disliked the new regime but hadn't disliked it enough (or been brave enough) to leave the whole world in consequence.

I find it interesting that in the whole of SC, we never actually meet a human Narnian aside from Rilian himself, though we see a few from a distance (Caspian, whoever he's leaning on, a bunch of well-dressed courtiers, a blind poet who recites the story of HHB, etc.). The crowd at the harbor is specifically noted to be only 1/5 human; the rest are all Beasts or Beings. The participants in the Great Snow Dance are entirely Beasts and Beings, not a single human among them. So it seems to me that either Narnia did remain quite segregated outside of Cair Paravel, or an awful lot of Telmarines left the country in less magical ways during Caspian's reign... which could be taken as evidence of civil unrest, perhaps even outright civil war.

I think that fertility issues are the only real explanation for why Rilian was born so very late in Caspian's life. I figure that if Caspian was in his teens during VDT and SC is set 70 years later (as per Eustace, who may be rounding), he is 85 at youngest when he dies. And for Rilian to have been "a very young knight" ten years before, when Caspian was at youngest 75, that implies he'd been born somewhere between fifteen and twenty years before that, when Caspian was 55 to 60. Which would be astonishingly old for a human woman to have a child, but as you say, the Star's Daughter is not human, so who knows!

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

re: "astonishingly old for a human woman to have a child" -- but it's Caspian who is 55 - 60, not Ramandu's daughter; we have no evidence for her age, especially given access to fireberries, which are making her father, at any rate, younger every day. Fertility issues are possible; it's also possible that they chose to delay the marriage and/or having children (especially if she knew she would stay fertile for many decades).
It occurs to me as well that it's also possible that Rilian is not their first child, but just the last surviving one. :( Or is that ruled out, canonically?
(Editing to add: someone wrote a story in which Ramandu's daughter wanted to explore the whole of the Narnian world before marrying, which took decades. I'm sorry that I can't remember who it was that wrote it.)

[edenfalling]

Sorry I wasn't clear! What I mean was that the Star's daughter appears to be about Caspian's age when he meets her -- Lewis specifically identifies her as a girl, not a woman -- so IF she were human, she would be in her fifties or sixties at Rilian's birth, the same as Caspian. Which is, of course, very old for childbirth.

I don't think anything is said one way or the other about potential dead siblings and/or miscarriages, but it's quite clear that at the time of the Queen's death, Rilian was the only living child. And I think dead siblings might well have been mentioned if they'd existed, since it would make the Lady of the Green Kirtle seem more sinister. (Miscarriages are quite likely, however, if we're already postulating fertility issues.)

I remember that story! It was from last year's NFE, yeah?